"Right To Fire" States

Factual Questions
41

That statement is misleading and a mischaracterization of fact.

COBRA allows the individual to maintain group coverage for a specified period of time if the individual can pay for the coverage.
And by pay, I don’t mean pay that portion of the cost that the individual was paying while employed. A friend of mine was paying $500 per month, ymmv. (this while unemployed).

But this begs the issue; do you believe that the employer should be able to fire a worker for arbitrary and capricious reasons?

42

http://www.ocnus.net/cgi-bin/exec/view.cgi?archive=21&num=4287

This article offers support for the contention that restrictions on the ability to fire lead to reluctance to hire, a fact that I would have thought was commen sense.

43

Good article. Thanks Zimaane.

44

You are mixing apples and oranges, as this article is not about the “employment at will doctrine” which is what this OP is about:

from the article -But there are signs that unions in Europe, particularly in Sweden, are starting to realize they must be more flexible if local companies are to survive. Union leaders in Germany have recently suggested that job-protection laws may need to be changed to encourage companies to create new jobs

This OP was begun about whether or not an employer has the right to fire workers for arbitrary or capricious reasons or no reasons at all - labor agreements negotiated by unions (concerning lay-off practices) are an entirely different issue.
(this would also include european union sponsored legislation concerning lay-off practices)

To equate the two is ridiculous.

45

COBRA does protect workers’ health benefits.

“That statement is misleading and a mischaracterization of fact.” I resent your insinuation that I am being misleading. COBRA does protect workers’ health benefits. The only limits on COBRA protection that I can think of are 1. the worker has to pay the full cost of coverage, not the subsidized amount he had while employed, 2. it doesn’t last for every - your right to continue last 18 months I think - not sure - double check , and 3. the employer has to have a minimum number of employees to be subject to COBRA.

46

Here is a detailed discussion of the at-will doctrine. Hey it even includes some exceptions that I forgot about.

link

47

county wrote

Employers should have the same rights to enter into and exit out of contracts that employees do. If a worker can legally discontinue his agreement with his employer arbitrarily (or even capriciously), then the employer deserves the same rights.

Fortunately, that’s how it works here in the U.S. We have a fair and equitable system that gives equal rights to both sides of the work-agreement. Other countries aren’t so fair, and the results are pretty obvious in their economies.

48

The system isn’t fair or equitable because it fails to address the enormous imbalance between someone looking for a job so he or she can stay fed, clothed and housed and an employer who merely needs to fill a slot in his organization. Until the enormous difference in consequences for an employee who’s laid off or fired and the employer who lays off or fires him or her is dealt with, the system is tremendously unfair and not equitable at all.

49

This is moving suspiciously in the direction of GD, but I’ll bite on the question of whether an employer “should” be able to fire an employee for any reason, or no reason - and the answer is an unqualified “yes.” We’re talking about creative destruction: it’s impossible to create without destroying. (An idea that’s as much Shiva as Schumpeter, really.)

Yes, that will result in dreadful unfairness to individuals. But on the whole, we have a much more dynamic labor market (and much lower unemployment) for that very reason.

The reality of human nature is that insecurity is a terrific motivator - usually the only motivator that really works. While it is true that some people will work hard regardless of how protected their positions are, anyone with experience dealing with highly unionized bureaucracies (Soviet economies, moter vehicle administrations, building trades in New York City) knows that most people will stop caring if the threat of losing their jobs disappears. (And I think most people who carefully examine their own psyches will come to the same conclusion.)

Mass layoffs can actually be beneficial if they’re strategic. IBM’s a terrific example - huge reductions as they reengineered themselves from a hardware/software company to a consulting entity. Reductions as technology changes are also rational, if painful - it simply takes many fewer works to produce a Chevy in 2003 than it did in 1973, and no amount of wishing it away will change that reality. Had GM not laid of tens of thousands, GM would no longer exist to support the remaining workers.

Of course, too often layoffs aren’t efficient - they’re just desperation. But in those cases, it’s hard to say that the employees are really harmed that much, because the employer is obviously tanking anyway. Either the employee’s fired on the way down, when at least there’s a chance for severance, or upon liquidation, when there usually aren’t enough assets left to pay it.

The best protections against this cycle are those that interfere with it least - so unemployment insurance, kept low enough so that the employee has a fire under his or her butt, is a terrific concept. I’d also like to see most benefits decoupled from employment, such as health insurance and pensions. Under our current system, these factors inhibit employees from leaving a job even when they (and the economy) might benefit - think of the secretary who has a great idea for a business, but who can’t afford to leave her kids without health coverage. So my solution is to encourage even greater labor market liquidity - not less of it.

50

I can see that I was unclear here, which might potentially lead to Godwinism. I did not intend to refer to employees as property, as you are aware, but instead to refer to the capital any employer expends on their payroll, which is of course their property and thus ought to be free of encumbrance for them to do as they see fit.

Normally, one can assume that anyone speaking of “the whole world” (or “all industrialized nations” or “all modern democracies”) is specifically talking only about the socialist countries of Europe. Needless to say, this goes hand in hand with accusing ones opponents of provincialism.

Thank you for pointing out that an irrational and demagogic argument equating paid employment with slavery might be made by someone with less dcruples than yourself. I will guard against such accusations in the future.

51

Eep. That last paragraph should be in response to Evil Captor, not LemonThrower. Mea Culpa.

52

Of course you would consider it fair and equitable if others were forced to please you but that is not the way the world works. You are not entitled to anything which others do not want to give you voluntarily and you entice them to give you things by giving something of value in exchange.

If an employer has decided he does not want or need your services he should not be forced to continue to pay you. Either he has no need for the services you were giving, in which case I fail to see why he should be forced to continue to employ you, or he has decided someone else can do the job better, in which case I fail to see why you are entitled to keep the job and take it from a person who can do it better.

There is a huge investment for each job created and the company needs employees producing to make money. An employer does not make money by firing people he needs. There is nobody in the world who knows better than the employer what person he needs for the job.

I cannot see why the fact that the employee needs the employer’s money gives him any entitlement to it. The employer needs the job done just as badlly if not more and yet the employee is allowed to quit.

Experience shows that making it difficult to fire employees just makes employees less productive and employers are less willing to create jobs. In the end the employee suffers more as he is unemployed. The USA has the least obstacles to hiring and firing and has the lowest jobless rate.

53

If that is so, then the employer should be able to prove that its termination decision was justified. I don’t think anyone here wants to argue that an employer must keep an employee who is incompetent, or even that an employer can’t hire a more competent employee to replace one who is less competent. People are arguing that an employer should not be able to fire an employee so that the HR guy’s brother-in-law can have that employee’s job. Or because the HR guy does not like homosexuals.

You speak, again, of the employer as a “he.” While there are many small business owners out there who do their own hiring (and many of these individuals are not male), there are also huge corporations whose hiring is done by committees or individuals. The competence, or lack thereofe, of these people then becomes a source of error in hiring and firing decisions.

Indeed, if the employer really knew what person “he” needed for the job, then “he” would not need to fire anyone. “He” would simply hire the right person for the job on the first try. But that does not happen. Employers make errors in hiring. And they make errors in firing. Perhaps if they were required to explain their reasons, and their reasoning were subject to review (as are decisions of government employers and unionized employers), the system would actually be more efficient. Perhaps not.

I don’t know. I simply disagree with your "employer knows best " theory.

On the other hand, it appears that we do not have the lowest jobless rate. At least according to Forbes Perhaps we should emulate some of the countries with lower unemployment rates.

54

I was wonderng what the hell you had against lemon thrower. I also refuse to apologize for pointing out your Freudian slip. I think you meant what you said, whether you choose to admit it or not. However, it’s WOULD be unfair of me to debate you on those grounds, since you have explicitly repudiated them, so I will accept your explanation for purposes of debate.

55

One of my favorite phrases about labor comes from the Clayton Anit-trust Act which states in part, “the labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce.”

Unions, both domestic and European recognize that lay-offs are necessary for various reasons to include workload, reorganizations etc. What I am talking about is the arbitrary and capricious firing of human beings. Whether the employer likes it or not, there is an implied contract in any employer-employee relationship. The “employment at will” doctrine has been and continues to be tested in the courts. Employees use whatever is available (in their litigation) to include verbal promises, employee handbooks and what has been said during job interviews.

I’d like to see some of you supposed “employers” tell job applicants that you retain the right to fire them for any or no reasons whatsoever, right up to the day before they are eligible to retire. That would be an interesting job interview.

56

You think some government bureaucrat knows more about my needs than I do? I suppose you would then also agree that the employee should get permission to quit from the same bureaucrat because losing an employee can be a major headache for a company, especially a small one.

And when someone comes around and offers to mow your lawn, you should justify to the neighborhood committee why you do not want to hire him. After all his livelihood depends on people like you hiring him.

You should also explain to the committee of national consumers why you want to buy a Japanese car when there are so many fine American cars. They might know better than you what car you really need.

Finally, I am amused by the Forbes chart which puts unemployment rates in Portugal, China, Mexico, Thailand, and other countries as much lower than the USA. They are probably reporting figures which are reported by their governments and are not comparable. Amusing nevertheless.

57

To me, “Firing” and “laying off” don’t mean the same thing. Firing is aimed at a particular individual – the employer terminates you, personally, perhaps replacing you immediately. A layoff is the elimination of the position, at least for the time being. A company “laying off employees by the hundred and even thousands” is shrinking quite seriously. Companies generally don’t get smaller because they want to; they have a serious problem. Forbidding a company to reduce their workforce when economics dictate would (at least) cause much greater reluctance to hire permanent, full-time workers and probably increase the likelihood of total failure.

This is simply factually incorrect. Very many non-wealthy people own shares, including most union members. Retirement plans tend to be built around stocks, for instance. Consider the concept of forcing the retirement fund to go bankrupt in order to prevent laying off workers rendered surplus by changing markets, mergers, or technology.

The alternative is to have the government guarantee/mandate continued employment (or at least, income and benefits), and retirement, even when the company goes under. This is socialism. It’s been tried before and generally does not work as well as hoped.

58

Face it, Sailor, that Forbes chart blows your cute little “we have the lowest unemployment rate because we have employment at will” theory right out of the water. Suggesting that the Forbes chart is nothing more than amusing by pointing at the potential unreliability of the figures from Portugal, China, Mexico and Thailand as if they are the whole story is at best a bad joke and at worst deliberate obfuscation.

How precisely do you explain away Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Singapore, the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, Ireland, Taiwan and Denmark?

Are their figures all unreliable too? Put your hands over your ears and shout “I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you!” It works just as well, I’m given to understand.

59

Evil Captor wrote

Basically, you’re saying that it’s not fair that some people have more money than other people. And some people share this view with you. Some people even tried to build a multi-national economy based on that principal. Turns out, that way of thinking is a lie, and alot of people were hurt in that process.

60

county wrote

Hell, I put it right in the offer letter:

Noone has a problem with it, and if they did, I don’t want them working here. I’m a good and fair employer, and for the most part my employees like me. But if they want to terminate their employment for whatever reason, they retain that right, and if I want the same, I also retain that right.